The primary goal of this program is to provide minority and disadvantaged undergraduate students with an initial exposure to basic and clinical science researchers and their areas of cardiovascular interest at the University of Louisville Health Sciences Center. This program is designed to support 8 undergraduate students each summer. It is anticipated that a significant number of the undergraduate students will elect to enter into graduate research programs at either this university or others around the country as a result of the experiences in our program. Emphasis will be placed on exposing students to literature-based hypothesis generation, experimental design and appropriate data analysis procedures. The students will be exposed to a biomedical research environment that emphasizes collaboration between basic and clinical science researchers and that clearly demonstrates the clinical relevance of cardiovascular research that is being conducted at this university. Based on results from our first 5 years of the program, we expect that at least 25% of the graduating participants will enter into a biomedically related research program. We also expect a number of minority and disadvantaged students interested in a medical or medically related career to participate in this program. We therefore project that at least 50% of our student participants will either enter a graduate research program or medical school when they complete their undergraduate program. (End of Abstract)